on January 5, 2025, 2:23 am
On Jan. 1, Cuba officially joined the international grouping known as BRICS, as one of 13 nations incorporated as “partner states.” The date, which coincides with the 66th anniversary of the triumph of their revolution, could mark a turning point for the beleaguered socialist state. But unless the country’s leaders embrace a strategic fiscal shift in the face of an asphyxiating US blockade, the prospect of state collapse – and the unraveling of over a half century of revolutionary social development – can not be dismissed.
“Ataca Sabroso” (Attack With Sweetness)
Throughout my decades of firsthand research in Cuba, few figures seemed to embody the revolution — and all its contradictions — like “Sumy,” the boxer. A slender 6′ 2,” at 60 years old, he could still pass for 39. Known for a long, stiff jab that snapped heads back, the retired fighter turned long-time high school principal still has his dazzling punching combinations. For two decades, Jesús Miguel Rodríguez Muro, known by his nickname Sumy, glided through cruiserweight boxing competitions across Cuba. Internationally, he made a name for himself as well, fighting in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries.
A dedicated member of the Cuban Communist Party, Sumy resides in Arroyo Naranjo, an outer municipality of Havana. The retired athlete lived as all Cubans do: modestly. During a recent visit, his feet swung off a small ramshackle bed. He had a collection of books and notebooks stacked on a bookshelf that was on its last leg. His bedroom, which moonlit as a living room, was furnished with a tiny TV straight out of the 1980s and a transistor radio that one might see in a Vietnam war movie. At night time, when hunger stirred and no protein was available, Sumy grabbed two pieces of cheap cake and tossed them into an empty loaf of bread. He devoured the make-shift stuffed gyro, winking at his boxing students: “Sabroso, sabroso!”
The Cuban Revolution once guaranteed every citizen health care, education and basic social and economic rights. In Sumy’s case, the shift could be clearly delineated by generation. Sumy’s parents’ generation made the revolution. Sumy’s generation benefited from the social transformation and fortified it. But Sumy’s children’s generation, who came of age in the 1990s, have had a different experience. In the words of one mother and communist militant in Marianao: “The new generation has only lived in a period of sacrifice and more sacrifice. They don’t remember the struggle against Batista nor the first decade of the revolution, with those marvelous debates and experiments we had at that time. They only know austerity.”
The collapse can be felt throughout Cuba’s economy, and perhaps nowhere more acutely than its critical sugar industry. Initially, collectivization proved immensely successful, with Cuba under Castro reaching a peak of 8.5 million metric tonnes of sugar between 1969 and 1970. In the early 90s, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuban farmers still produced 7 million metric tons, accounting for a whopping 30% of global sugar exports. But the number fell by half virtually overnight as Cuba’s friends abroad disappeared, and continued to dwindle in the intervening years.
The decline has become more pronounced in recent years, as the number of functioning sugar mills in Cuba has dropped to just 16, with US sanctions continuing to make repairs near-impossible. In 2019, the island managed to produce 1.3 million metric tons of sugar. By 2023, that number dropped to 350,000, with the island failing – for the first time since the 1800s – to produce enough sugar to provide for domestic consumption. As economist Juan Triana explained, it’s difficult to overstate the significance of the massive dropoff in sugar: “For more than 150 years, the industry of sugarcane was both the main export income and the locomotive for the rest of the economy. That’s what we’ve lost.”
Tourism, which overtook sugar as Cuba’s top industry in 1997, has nearly evaporated in the same recent span. Following the appearance of COVID, the island’s visitors dropped from over 4,000,000 per year to just 356,500 in 2021.
Now, Cuba has neither the foreign revenue nor a self-reliant economy to feed its people. The island has been teetering on the brink of disaster since 1990; the start of the pandemic only exacerbated the situation. There are routine blackout crises. Gas shortages are frequent. A trip across Havana on public transportation can take three hours or more. Residents, fatigued by six and a half decades of a Cold War, are demanding “electricity and food.” The imperialist Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) forecasts that this reality will spurn more protests. Rations are down to a bare minimum and even those are often not available. According to one doctor and Cuban Communist Party leader known by his nom de guerre, Oldanier: “We live like Palestinians minus the bombing. Malnutrition is everywhere. Inflation has skyrocketed. The state cannot pay our salaries. Child mortality is way up. More and more people are fleeing.”
Cuba, like many nations targeted by the US for regime change, has seen a major exodus in recent years, with nearly half a million Cubans – representing a full 5% of the Cuban population – reportedly attempting to immigrate to the United States between 2021 and 2023.
The end of rations?
Before the aggravated crisis that began with the pandemic, every month, each member of a household in Cuba received a monthly “canasta básica” (basic basket) consisting of an allotment of rice, chickpeas, black beans, cooking oil, salt, sugar, coffee, soap, bread, eggs, chicken, tobacco, and toothpaste. Now, residents complain that portions have dropped significantly, rice arrives late, and chicken has vanished, replaced by cans of potted meat. If a family wants fruit, vegetables, or anything beyond la libreta (the ration book), it is up to their own individual spending ability. Families describe the creative artform of stretching a meager amount of food for the entire month, with one explaining how they saved up extra eggs for New Years Eve in order to be able to give their children some type of treat that night.
Cuba’s internationally-renowned medical sector, once the pride of Latin America, hasn’t been immune to the downturn either. “We cannot provide what is required for those with diabetes and other sick people,” one nurse lamented.
Due to shortages deliberately caused by the intensification of the trade embargo, Cuba’s inflation rate is an astronomical 39.1%. Access to dollars is the only way many people can eat. They can access the private Micro and Small Enterprises stores (MYPIMES) which sell food and other products at prices pegged to the dollar and euro. This means that to buy a pound of chicken in “the free market,” a Cuban will spend up to 20 percent of their monthly salary. For two weeks of milk, they may spend two weeks of their salary. Many Communist Party vets say these are their worst economic conditions yet. One community leader lamented: “We don’t have medication. I am a diabetic. We just keep losing weight. Look at these 25 pounds I have lost. Carlos Lazo’s Bridges of Love (Puentes de Amor) program helps us but it is not enough.”
With no indication that things will improve anytime soon, many Cubans – specifically, young adults – want out. Meanwhile, their blockaded futures provide fertile soil for the next color revolution attempt.
The younger generation of Cubans are mostly singing a different tune than Sumy and the revolutionary old guard. US intelligence is doing all it can to exploit the resentments of those elements which USAID branded as “desocialized and marginalized youth” from Afro-Cuban communities. As Max Blumenthal reported for The Grayzone, US intelligence has invested millions in a Cultural Cold War-style program to boost counterrevolutionary rappers, artists and activists.
The first wave of weaponized Cuban artists emerged from the so-called San Isidro Movement. I first met San Isidro founders Amaury Pacheco, Omni Zona Franca and some of the collective’s future activists in 2001 at poetry and music festivals in Alamar, Havana del Este. While these dreadlocked, anarchist-oriented performers claimed to be “non-ideological,” it was clear they were the kind of “dissidents” the CIA was courting to lead the counterrevolution. They were fiercely dedicated to toppling the Cuban state and eager to work with any foreigners who could help them travel internationally and advocate for a Western-style color revolution in Cuba.
Etc.
Responses